Adobe recently released a sneak peek at a fairly significant new feature coming to the Lightroom family and Camera Raw. The masking feature replaces the old gradient and brush tools for making elective edits, and includes the ability to have multiple masks combined in different ways. The masking feature also to use AI to select, with a single click, the sky or key subject. It’s pretty impressive and looks to be one of the biggest feature upgrades to Lightroom in a long time.

As I’ve recently started using my Laptop as my full time computer for everyday tasks, I recently came to appreciate a feature of Capture One, that not many people may be aware of. I knew about this feature, and I’ve briefly mentioned it before, but it’s only in the past few months that I came to really appreciate it. If you’re working on a catalogue, and your originals are stored on an external drive, you can disconnect that drive and continue to work off the previews.

Starting today, until October 4th, Capture One is offering anyone who buys or upgrades to Capture One 21 a free upgrade to Capture One 22 in December. They have already announced that HDR and Panorama merging will be coming in Capture One 22 when it’s released in December, so if you’ve been on the fence about upgrading, now might be the time.

I recently posted a set of photos on my Photo Journal blog about a recent trip to a local urban farm and stately home here in Dublin. Over on my Patreon feed, one of my supporters commented that I always seemed to get really nice greens on this kinds of images, so I thought I would share a few tricks as to how I go about shooting these kinds of photos.

You’ve probably noticed that I haven’t posted regularly in a little while, so I wanted to give you a quick update. I’ve been busy with client work, so I haven’t had time to write or blog for the past few weeks. So here is a quick update on what’s going on and what’s planned.

Today Skylum announced a new product - Luminar Neo. They are billing this a new product and a new member of the Luminar family. It is a separate application from Luminar AI and Luminar AI will continue to be sold. So, what’s new, and what’s the difference?

Near to where I live is what is a rather remarkable place to find in a city. Called “Airfield”, it is a 38 acre site which features a 19th century estate, gardens and a fully working farm. Recently, on an overcast and rainy day, my wife and I paid a visit to the estate for a walk around the gardens, to get away from the outside world for a few hours and I ended up taking a ridiculous number of photos.

Capture One today announced via their newsletter that two of the most requested features are coming in the next major release due in December. These are of course: Panorama and HDR merging.

In a recent blog post I covered the icons on the top of each of Capture One’s tool panels, and part of that was how you can sync settings from an individual adjustment panel. Based on the responses I got, it occurred to me that the way you sync settings in Capture One is a little confusing, especially for Lightroom switchers, and so I decided to make a video to explain it.

The story of how I was recently at one of my new favourite places to photograph, and I accidentally wandered onto a film set.

It’s time to catch up on some of the latest updates in the Photo Software world. Today, Adobe updated lots of its applications including Photoshop and Lightroom, DXO announced that its PhotoLab 4 software won and award, and details of the most recent Luminar update.

In this video, I show you some tips on how to use the Dehaze tool creatively in Capture One. By using a negative amount on Capture One’s dehaze slider and by tweaking the colour, I created a soft light effect.

On almost every tool panel in Capture One, there is a row of icons across the top of the panel. These are pretty much the same across most Tools, and in this post I go through each one and show you what they do.

On my recent photo essay from Hook lighthouse in Ireland, I was editing the images, and wanted something a little special for the cover photo. I had tried lots of different things, and in the end, the image I used went through several steps to get it to where it was for the final use of it. In this video I talk you through the steps I took from the starting raw photo to the finished image.

On the last day of our recent trip around the southwest of Ireland, we stopped at a Lavender farm in Co. Wexford. My wife and I have always been a fan of Lavender, and it featured in the flowers at our wedding, so it was nice to see where it comes from. It also always makes for good photos.